German chancellor pushes AI autonomy

Germany doesn’t want to rely on others for AI: Germany must avoid becoming “entirely dependent on third parties” for its AI resources, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday, arguing that digital sovereignty is “a truly existential question.” Here are details from Reuters.

Merz’s plan: Build and run Germany’s own AI, from the hardware to the software. Merz admits that will take “an enormous technological and organisational effort.”

Watch the trend: The comments reflect a global trend of nations wanting to assert control over their AI systems as they become a more consequential component of government and industry — and fretting about how much the systems make them dependent on large tech companies that are mostly based in the US or China. (The UAE and Saudi Arabia are near the front of the pack in asserting some level of AI autonomy, as we noted above.)

MEANWHILE- Chinese AI is chugging along: Tencent says its new AI model, Hy4, now beats Chinese rivals like DeepSeek in some tests, Bloomberg reports. Tencent plans to make its model free for anyone to download. But even Tencent admits it’s still not as good as the best US models from OpenAI and Anthropic.